Destined to be one of the great what-ifs

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The election and its aftermath left Mark Latham wounded, "perhaps fatally . . . by the time pancreatitis administered the coup de grace".Photo: Brendan Esposito

Rarely has a politician risen and fallen so quickly. But, in
another life, Mark Latham could have been PM, writes Mungo
MacCallum.

Australia produces two kinds of political leaders. There are the
trekkers, such as Bob Menzies, Malcolm Fraser, Bob Hawke and John
Howard - professionals who approach their job with caution, seldom
acting until they are sure the electorate is behind them and intent
on avoiding risk.

They usually last a long time and often achieve a great deal,
but by and large they do it in such an unobtrusive way that the
voters do not get too alarmed, and are unlikely to blame them when
things go wrong. Even when the economic revolution of the Hawke
years ended in the tears of a recession, it was his treasurer who
copped the flak.

In contrast there are the adventurers: John Gorton, Gough
Whitlam, Paul Keating. They are there for a good time, not for a
long time. Their mottos are "I did it my way"; "Crash through or
crash"; "Downhill, one ski, no poles". They have their own agendas
and they pursue them regardless of the consequences. If the voters
get left behind in the rush, too bad.

Their hold on office is usually brief: Whitlam led his party for
10 years, but spent less than three as prime minister. Sometimes,
of course, they don't make it at all: John "Feral Abacus" Hewson's
prescription of Fightback was altogether too radical for the
electorate.

And then there was Mark "Wild Ride" Latham. Seldom has a
politician risen so fast or crashed so spectacularly.

As often happens with adventurers, he became leader in unusual,
even desperate, circumstances. Much was asked of him, and the fact
that for a brief period he actually exceeded the hopes and
expectations of his supporters made his destruction all the more
bitter when it came.

It is easy now to forget how completely he dominated the
political landscape less than a year ago. While the Government's
heavy hitters (Howard, Peter Costello, Tony Abbott) went after him
with all guns blazing - and Latham's past provided plenty of
ammunition - it was months before they even winged their target,
and then it was only because Latham's "troops home by Christmas"
line had turned him into a sitting duck.

And it wasn't just because Latham broke the rules by writing his
own script on everything from reading to children to parliamentary
superannuation, a tactic that had Howard floundering both inside
and outside Parliament. Latham, in a laid-back way, had that
indefinable quality of charisma that Howard so conspicuously
lacked.

He took politics back to its roots. Instead of holding carefully
staged media events and spending his time with patsy radio jocks,
Latham held public meetings at which he welcomed heckling, argument
and even personal abuse. He got all three, but won considerable
praise for doing what Howard wouldn't do: talking and listening to
voters face-to-face, without the protection of a scrum of minders
and other bodyguards.

Watching him from the back of a packed hall on the NSW north
coast, I was astonished at how positive the response was. Far more
of the audience had come out of curiosity than commitment, but a
lot of them went home if not as locked-in Labor voters than at
least leaning that way. They may not have been totally convinced by
Latham, but they wanted to believe in something more accessible,
more sympathetic and, let's face it, less bloody boring than
Howard. Latham just might be the man.

He had substance and the passion, the fire in the belly that Kim
Beazley and Simon Crean had seemed unable to summon when it was
needed. He was a thinker, a man of ideas. He had written books -
true, few people had read them and even those who had were not
altogether certain of what they meant, but they were there in
print. It was hard to imagine most politicians even holding a book
the right way up, let alone writing one.

He was a battler and despite the fact that, like so many
parliamentarians these days, he had never had a job outside
politics, Latham could pass as a "real" Labor man. Even if he was
unlikely to win government at his first attempt - something the
realists were prepared to concede - he was eminently electable.

But, unfortunately, many of the qualities that made him
appealing to the electorate were poison inside his own party. He
remained a loner, supremely confident in his own judgement and
unwilling to indulge in the mutual back-scratching which is the
glue that holds the Labor Party together.

He was openly contemptuous of many of his colleagues and of much
of the media. Some of the latter were, of course, always going to
be in the opposite camp, and more vehemently so as he looked a
serious threat to Howard. But he made extra and unnecessary enemies
through his sheer impatience with those he saw as fools.
Inevitably, when the wheels fell off the Latham bandwagon with the
disastrous election loss and its aftermath, a substantial lynch mob
was ready and waiting.

Latham's appeal had not been illusory; the electorate's interest
and goodwill remained evident until the end. But it just wasn't
enough: a ruthless and professional campaign by the Government
persuaded the public that he was still too much of a risk, too much
of an unknown. Latham's reaction was shock and denial, and he was
already deeply - perhaps fatally - wounded by the time pancreatitis
administered the coup de grace.

Like many before him, he was a near miss. He became leader too
early in his career, he lacked the skills needed to deal with the
webs of intrigue within his own party, he refused to massage the
media and the advisers he did listen to were out of their depth
against Howard's praetorian guard.

But he had many qualities that were not only desirable and
attractive but are in short supply in today's ALP. In other
circumstances he could have developed into a formidable leader,
even prime minister. As it is, he remains one of the great
what-ifs.

Political journalist Mungo MacCallum's latest book,
Run, Johnny, Run - The Story of the 2004 Election, was
launched last month by Mark Latham.